Take the Lead: Do Not Feed Steller Sea Lions Video

Feeding sea lions is illegal, and can result in habituation, aggression, negative impacts to fisheries, entanglement, injury, and death. Sea lions lose their natural wariness of humans and associate people with food. This often results in dangerous and unpredictable behavior towards people. Feeding changes the natural behaviors of sea lions, decreasing their willingness to find their own food, and increasing changes they will steal fish (and gear) from fishermen. Fishermen have been injured. These changed behaviors may be passed to other sea lions which increases their risk of injury from boats, entanglement in fishing gear, and intentional harm by people frustrated with the behavioral changes.